Vindication, but too late.

Remember those charges of runaway acceleration brought against Toyota? The ones that said numerous drivers had experienced their cars and trucks taking on a life of their own and causing them to accelerate out of control no matter what the driver attempted to do? Well, it seems after 10 months of rigorous testing by NASA engineers, among others, the primary suspect, Toyota's electrical systems, are not to blame.

After dissecting Toyota’s engine control software and bathing its microchips in every type of radiation engineers could think of, federal investigators found no evidence that the company’s cars are susceptible to sudden acceleration from electronic failures, the government said Tuesday.
...
Mr. LaHood and other officials were also quite diplomatic about a likely cause of the unintended accelerations — pushing on the accelerator instead of the brake. On Tuesday department officials called these “pedal misapplications,” and when a reporter asked if the problem was drivers making a mistake, Mr. LaHood shot back from the podium, “Nobody up here has ever insinuated the term that you used, driver error.”

Back when this exploded on to the news, many interviews with drivers and their attorneys searching for deep pockets claiming to have experienced sudden acceleration and been driven by their cars into accidents or traffic violations were aired or printed int he news. The news created great embarrassment for Toyota, forced them to have many recalls, caused Toyota's reputation for reliability untold harm and eventually had customers looking elsewhere for their next vehicle causing Toyota sales to suffer.

Will the news hounds now go back to those who made claims of sudden acceleration for a follow up? Will there be some mea culpa from those who pressured and smeared Toyota?

Nah, I don't think so either.

Instapundit Glenn Reynolds has more here with a link to a call by Walter Olson for some follow up.